By Alexander Kupatadze and Lakshmi Kumar

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), sometimes referred to as ‘Globalisation 2.0,’ is a global infrastructure development strategy that aims to fundamentally reshape global trade. The BRI is a key element of the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ‘Major Country Diplomacy,’ which intends to expand China’s leadership role in global affairs. The BRI covers 149 countries and promises increased connectivity between China and the rest of the world through infrastructure projects, policy coordination, unimpeded trade, financial integration, and people-to-people bonds. Since its inception in 2013, China has already spent an estimated US$200 billion on renewing and modernising infrastructure along the sea and overland trade routes that make up the BRI. However, it is not clear whether the BRI will actually deliver on its promise of achieving deeply transformative economic growth. Much like the impact of the internet when global online connectivity transformed criminality (global cybercrime now generates over US$1.5 trillion per year), the rapid development of infrastructural linkages and logistical corridors has the potential to radically alter the illegal trade landscape. As with the inception of the internet, the BRI has not been designed and implemented with the aversion of crime in mind, which may lead to negative developments including the expansion of illicit supply chains. To understand the consequences of BRI connectivity, we convened a two-day-long workshop at King’s College London with the financial support of the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), attended by leading experts on..…

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  illicit trade as well as representatives of both consumer industries (namely tobacco, pharmaceuticals, and fertilisers) and international organisations. This paper is an outcome of the discussion(s) that took place at that same workshop as well as the research of the two co-authors on the BRI and its implications for illicit trade.

Washington, DC: Global Financial Integrity, 2022. 38p.

By Kathryn Westmore

It has long been difficult for prosecutors in the UK to hold corporates to account for criminal behaviour and, in particular, for economic crime-related misconduct. The ‘identification doctrine’ requires that only the acts of the person who represents the company’s ‘directing mind and will’ can be attributed to a company. At the same time, it is recognised that there are certain types of criminal behaviour that can only be carried out within a corporate structure, and which are carried out for the benefit of that corporate entity. Therefore, it is inherently problematic that it is difficult to bring corporate criminal prosecutions. The introduction of ‘failure to prevent’ offences are an attempt to overcome these difficulties. The basis of a failure to prevent offence is simple – to have any defence, an organisation needs to prove that it had ‘reasonable’ or ‘adequate’ procedures in place to prevent an individual associated with it from carrying out a criminal activity. The first failure to prevent offence was introduced in relation to bribery in 2010; two further failure to prevent offences followed in the Criminal Finances Act 2017 related to the facilitation of tax evasion....  

London:  Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI), 2022. 19P.

Edited by Daniel Brombacher, Günther Maihold, Melanie Müller and Judith Vorrath

This anthology examines different dimensions of illicit commodity flows and asks how they can be understood through a geographical lens that looks from the Global South to Europe. By applying a supply chain perspective, it generates insights into how illegal, grey and legal markets merge at certain points in the production chain. This volume seeks to promote a holistic view through a ‘thick description’ of the specific flows and develops practical policy recommendations. It brings together contributions from authors from a wide range of backgrounds, including international scholars, journalists and specialists in both law enforcement and development cooperation 

Baden-Baden, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG,  2022.  412p.

Edited by Magdalena Bainczyk and Agnieszka Kubiak-Cyrul

Although more than 75 years have elapsed since the end of the Second World War, the magnitude of crimes and their long-term effects, caused also by lawyers e.g. in German special courts, make the subject of liability of the state in the context of the Second World War ever topical and valid. Historia magistra vitae est, and the process of learning from history should in this case cover not only the years 1933–1945, but also the entire post-war period. Justice was neither restored nor meted out. One of the reasons for the lack of administration of justice was West Germany's conscious policy of personal continuity after the Second World War. The latter was the topic of the Rosenburg Exhibition – the Federal Ministry of Justice of the Federal Republic of Germany in the Shadow of National Socialist Past. The texts grew out of the context of the exhibition and show the far-reaching consequences of War and Nazi crimes in international relations of a legal nature.

Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2021. 226p.

By Alan Doig

This book provides an introduction to state crime, with a particular focus on the UK. The use of crime by the UK to achieve its policy and political objectives is an underdeveloped aspect of academic study of individual and institutional criminality, the exercise of political power, public policy-making and political development. The book provides an overview of definitional issues before exploring possible examples of state crime in the UK and then considering why state crime occurs and how it is investigated and adjudicated. State Crime is split into six sections in order to address a number of key questions: what is state crime according to the literature? What is a crime? What is the state? What are the drivers for the State to commit a crime? What are the roles of the various institutions of the State in being involved in state crime and what, in terms of monitoring or investigating state crime or unethical conduct, are the roles of those institutions, from the police through to Parliament, responsible for holding governments and state institutions to account? Unusually for books on state crime, this book looks at a specific country as the context within which to explore these issues. Further, it not only looks at crime but also the structure of the modern state and thus provides a balanced and rigorous perspective with which to study the concept of state crime. Overall, this book seeks to provide an introduction to state crime for contemporary states which will facilitate the study of such issues as part of mainstream academic study across a number of disciplines.

Cullompton, Devon, UK: Willan, 2010. 270p.

By Carl A. Trocki

What is the link between opium, imperialism and capitalism? Was the British Empire built on opium? And what can the nineteenth-century drug trade tell us about the Asian heroin traffic of today? Carl A. Trocki answers all these questions in his fascinating history of the great imperial drug trade of the nineteenth century: the British-Indian opium trade. The book brings together for the first time nearly fifty years of scholarship and research on opium trafficking, addiction, and other studies on drugs, the economy and human society. Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy raises provocative questions about the historical relationship between opium, capitalism and European imperialism in Asia. Opium needs to be considered in its role as an economic commodity, and seen in the context of other "drug'' trades, including sugar, tea, alcohol and tobacco. Trocki's evidence convincingly suggests that European imperialism, and the creation of a global economy, relied heavily on these great drug trades. All reoriented labor, land and capital in the service of commodity production and usually involved "industrial" modes of production. In order to serve these trades, systems of international exchange - such as shipping lines and banking - were brought into existence. They created the first great mass consumer markets, first in Europe and then, with opium, in Asia. Opium, Trocki argues, facilitated important elements in the European imperial advance through Asia, and was equally a fiscal support for virtually all of the new Asian states.

Abingdon, Oxon, UK; New York: Routledge, 1999. 224p.

By Salvador Astucia

After President John F. Kennedy was killed in 1963, America became deeply involved in the Vietnam War. Within a few short years, heroin addiction in America reached epidemic proportions. In the background, Israel expanded its borders by force and became a colonial empire ruling a nation of hostile Palestinian subjects. This book reveals how Israel exploited the Western powers’ long history of opium trafficking as a means of toppling the young American president.

Gaithersburg, MD: Ravening Wolf Publishing Company. 2003. 416p.

By Sandra King-Savic

Analyzing informal trading practices and smuggling through the case study of Novi Pazar, this book explores how societies cope when governments no longer assume the responsibility for providing welfare to their citizens. How do economic transnational practices shape one’s sense of belonging in times of crisis/precarity? Specifically, how does the collapse of the Ottoman Empire – and the subsequent migration of the Muslim Slav population to Turkey – relate to the Yugoslav Succession Wars during the 1990s? Using the case study of Novi Pazar, a town in Serbia that straddles the borders of Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo that became a smuggling hub during the Yugoslav conflict, the book focuses on that informal market economy as a prism through which to analyze the strengthening of existing relations between the émigré community in Turkey and the local Bosniak population in the Sandžak region. Demonstrating the interactive nature of relations between the state and local and émigré communities, this book will be of interest to scholars and students interested in Southeastern Europe or the Yugoslav Succession Wars of the 1990s, as well as social anthropologists who are working on social relations and deviant behavior.

London: Routledge, 2021. 198 p.

By Craig Unger

'A bombshell.' Daily Mail 'Damning, terrifying and enraging.' The Spectator House of Trump, House of Putin offers the first comprehensive investigation into the decades-long relationship among Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Mafia that ultimately helped win Trump the White House. It is a chilling story that begins in the 1970s, when Trump made his first splash in the booming, money-drenched world of New York real estate, and ends with Trump's inauguration as president of the United States. That moment was the culmination of Vladimir Putin's long mission to undermine Western democracy, a mission that he and his hand-selected group of oligarchs and associates had ensnared Trump in, starting more than twenty years ago with the massive bailout of a string of sensational Trump hotel and casino failures in Atlantic City. This book confirms the most incredible American paranoias about Russian malevolence. To most, it will be a hair-raising revelation that the Cold War did not end in 1991--that it merely evolved, with Trump's apartments offering the perfect vehicle for billions of dollars to leave the collapsing Soviet Union. In House of Trump, House of Putin, Craig Unger methodically traces the deep-rooted alliance between the highest echelons of American political operatives and the biggest players in the frightening underworld of the Russian Mafia. He traces Donald Trump's sordid ascent from foundering real estate tycoon to leader of the free world. He traces Russia's phoenix-like rise from the ashes of the post-Cold War Soviet Union as well as its ceaseless covert efforts to retaliate against the West and reclaim its status as a global superpower. Without Trump, Russia would have lacked a key component in its attempts to return to imperial greatness. Without Russia, Trump would not be president. 

New York: Dutton, 2018. 384p.

By Letizia Paoli , Victoria A. Greenfield , Peter Reuter

Heroin is universally considered the world's most harmful illegal drug. This is due not only to the damaging effects of the drug itself, but also to the spread of AIDS tied to its use. Burgeoning illegal mass consumption in the 1960s and 1970s has given rise to a global market for heroin and other opiates of nearly 16 million users. The production and trafficking of opiates have caused crime, disease, and social distress throughout the world, leading many nations to invest billions of dollars trying to suppress the industry. The failure of their efforts has become a central policy concern. Can the world heroin supply actually be cut, and with what consequences? The result of a five-year-long research project involving extensive fieldwork in six Asian countries, Colombia, and Turkey, this book is the first systematic analysis of the contemporary world heroin market, delving into its development and structure, its participants, and its socio-economic impact. It provides a sound and comprehensive empirical base for concluding that there is little opportunity to shrink the global supply of heroin in the long term, and explains why production is concentrated in a handful of countries--and is likely to remain that way. On the basis of these findings, the authors identify a key set of policy opportunities, largely local, and make suggestions for leveraging them. This book also offers new insights into market conditions in India, Tajikistan, and other countries that have been greatly harmed by the production and trafficking of illegal opiates. A deft integration of economics, sociology, history, and policy analysis, The World Heroin Market provides a rigorous and vital look into the complex--and resilient--global heroin trade.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 388p.

By Michael Lohmuller, Nicole Cook, and Logan Pauley

The illicit synthetic drug networks that fuel the ongoing opioid epidemic in the United States continue to evolve and adapt to changing incentives and pressures, finding innovative ways to exploit technology and increased global interconnectivity. C4ADS investigated these drug supply chains, conducting extensive multilingual analysis of Chinese corporate entities, the clear web, and social media, in order to better understand the methods by which they operate.   

Washington, DC: C4ADS 2020, 45p.

By Lauren Greenwood and Kevin Fashola

The issue brief examines the evolution of China’s role in global illicit fentanyl trade. China placed all forms of fentanyl and its analogues on a regulatory schedule in 2019, but the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) assesses China remains the primary country of origin for illicit fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked in the United States. While Mexican drug cartels have always been a critical node for smuggling illicit fentanyl into the United States, this brief finds that the links between Chinese and Mexican actors in the fentanyl trade has grown in complexity, including the development of sophisticated money laundering operations. Finally, the brief concludes that while cooperation between the United States and China remains limited, there are opportunities for the United States to work with other countries on counter-narcotic enforcement.
 Washington, EC:  U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission,   

By Roderic Broadhurst, Matthew Ball and Harshit Trivedi

A snapshot of the sale of fentanyl and its analogues across several popular darknet markets between 2 January and 27 March 2019 reveals the amount, types and physical forms available. Of the 127,541 unique drug listings identified, 13,135 were opioids (10.3% of all drugs), of which 1,118 (0.876% of all drugs) were fentanyl or its analogues. Between 27.3 and 39.3 kilograms of fentanyl and its derivatives were available over the period. The average price of fentanyl was A$99 per gram, while carfentanil was A$26.8 per gram. The shipping methods, cross-market operations and product specialisation of the 303 active fentanyl vendors on these darknet markets are also described.

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2020. 14p.

By United States and Rand Corporation

The Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking, established under Section 7221 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020, was charged with examining aspects of the synthetic opioid threat to the United States—specifically, with developing a consensus on a strategic approach to combating the illegal flow of synthetic opioids into the United States. This final report describes items involving the illegal manufacturing and trafficking of synthetic opioids, as well as the deficiencies in countering their production and distribution, and includes action items directed to appropriate executive branch agencies and congressional committees and leadership. Get appendices to the report.

Rand, 2022. 148p.

By Bryce Pardo, Lois M. Davis, Melinda Moore

The opioid overdose crisis has continued to accelerate in recent years because of the arrival of potent synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl and related substances. Although several synthetic opioids have legitimate medical applications, the majority of overdoses are due to illicitly manufactured imports. Researchers from the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center evaluated publicly available data to better understand the dimensions of the consumption and supply of these substances. They performed four tasks designed to gain insight into this new and quickly evolving phenomenon: (1) They evaluated trends in overdoses across regions and over time. Understanding where overdoses due to synthetic opioids occur provides a rough proxy for where law enforcement should prioritize screening efforts for packages that enter the country destined for such markets. (2) They evaluated the supply of fentanyl and related substances using public data from state and local forensic laboratories that report to national systems. The authors note a relationship between lab exhibits and fatal overdoses across regions and over time. (3) They examined the online markets for synthetic opioids. The team collected quantitative and qualitative data from online marketplaces and vendors to better understand what supply and concealment mechanisms vendors use when shipping product to the United States. (4) They evaluated the adulterants and other bulking agents used in retail distribution. There are limitations to each of these approaches, and the authors provide caveats to interpreting their findings.

Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2019. 91p.

By Bryce Pardo and Peter Reuter

  The synthetic opioid crisis in North America has increased fatal overdose rates to unprecedented levels within a matter of a few years. It involves new technologies, a new source of supply (the chemical industry in China), and new forms of distribution (the internet and mail). These elements are perhaps even more difficult to suppress than other supply sources from foreign countries. This has led to an assumption that nothing can be learned from prior experience in trying to control drug markets. In this paper, we first explore what might be learned from some notable past successes. We begin by examining a set of episodes in which enforcement against a specific illegal drug market had more than a brief impact on supply, though the enforcement may have caused other harms. Examples include the near-elimination of the quaaludes market in the 1980s and the “heroin drought” in Australia in the early 2000s. Exploring common features of these past successes reveals insights that may reduce the risk of fatal overdose. We then examine the characteristics of fentanyl distribution in detail, noting that taken individually, the

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  differences (such as the low costs of fentanyl production and its distribution by mail) are in fact not so distinctive: it is the combination of many differences that creates the unique threat. In response, authorities need to change priorities in supply control domestically. Prior to the arrival of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, it was reasonable for police and prosecutors to focus on (1) raising prices and restricting availability to reduce consumption and (2) minimizing the violence and disorder around street markets. Yet today, a more important goal may be to reduce the toxicity of the supply and thus the number of drug overdoses. This paper applies the insights of the “focused deterrence” approach developed by David Kennedy and Mark Kleiman, which involves using multiple levers to attain a specific policy goal. We conclude with some specific suggestions for local and national supply-control agencies— including the need to focus more on regulating rather than reducing markets to minimize harm, and to distinguish between markets not yet swamped by fentanyl or in transition and those where the drug is entrenched. Strategies appropriate in one context may not serve well in another.

Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2020. 21p.

By Julie O’Donnell, Lauren J. Tanz, R. Matt Gladden, Nicole L. Davis, Jessica Bitting

During May 2020–April 2021, the estimated number of drug overdose deaths in the United States exceeded 100,000 over a 12-month period for the first time, with 64.0% of deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone (mainly illicitly manufactured fentanyls [IMFs], which include both fentanyl and illicit fentanyl analogs).* Introduced primarily as adulterants in or replacements for white powder heroin east of the Mississippi River (1), IMFs are now widespread in white powder heroin markets, increasingly pressed into counterfeit pills resembling oxycodone, alprazolam, or other prescription drugs, and are expanding into new markets, including in the western United States† (2). This report describes trends in overdose deaths involving IMFs (IMF-involved deaths) during July 2019–December 2020 (29 states and the District of Columbia [DC]), and characteristics of IMF-involved deaths during 2020 (39 states and DC) using data from CDC’s State Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting System (SUDORS).

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  During July 2019–December 2020, IMF-involved deaths increased sharply in midwestern (33.1%), southern (64.7%), and western (93.9%) jurisdictions participating in SUDORS. Approximately four in 10 IMF-involved deaths also involved a stimulant. Highlighting the need for timely overdose response, 56.1% of decedents had no pulse when first responders arrived. Injection drug use was the most frequently reported individual route of drug use (24.5%), but evidence of snorting, smoking, or ingestion, but not injection drug use was found among 27.1% of decedents. Adapting and expanding overdose prevention, harm reduction, and response efforts is urgently needed to address the high potency (3), and various routes of use for IMFs. Enhanced treatment for substance use disorders is also needed to address the increased risk for overdose (4) and treatment complications (5) associated with using IMFs with stimulants.

MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2021;70:1740-1746.

By The Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce

This, the final report of the Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce, sets out a suite of evidence-based recommendations and actions that will reduce drug-related deaths and harms and improve and save the lives of people who use drugs. Our final report has four substantive chapters. 1. Context: explores where we are now, gives an overview of the work of the Taskforce to date and discusses the legal context in which Scotland operates. 2. Culture: sets out what the ethos of the system should be and the changes that are needed to achieve this. It calls for broad culture change from stigma, discrimination, politicisation and punishment towards care, compassion and human rights. 3. Care: investigates what is needed to deliver an effective, consistent, personcentred, whole-systems approach that delivers high-quality care. It builds on the principle that drug dependency should receive parity with any other health conditions, with people getting the care they need when they need it. 4. Co-ordination: sets out the foundations of the changes that are required, including targeted resource and decisive leadership. Twenty overarching recommendations are provided at the beginning of the report. Each chapter then includes evidence-based actions that are summarised in a table at the end of the report.

Edinburgh: The Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce, 2022. 135p.

By Chloe Gilroy

The nexus between illicit drug economies and great power competition is a critical, yet understudied, dimension of counternarcotics. If policy experts and academics understood how great power competition intersects with illicit drug economies, then counternarcotics experts would have yet another incisive theoretical lens through which to understand drug flows. This paper contends that China is unwilling to crack down on chemical precursor flows that feed the Western Hemisphere’s synthetic drug trade due to its broader geopolitical imperatives, which are shaped by great power competition. Chinese pharmaceutical and chemical producers are taking advantage of un-checked drug demand in the United States by selling chemical precursors to Mexican drug trafficking organizations that manufacture and smuggle synthetic drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border. Their involvement in the Western Hemisphere drug trade has expanded the market for synthetic drugs and has destabilized Mexico’s criminal landscape. The Chinese government’s response to the export of massive quantities of illegal drugs and precursor chemicals is largely driven by external pressure and characterized by a lack of credible commitment to reduce the flow of illegal drugs and precursor chemicals. This paper will start by delving into the existing literature on great power competition and illicit drug economies before exploring China’s approach to drug control. It will then dissect trafficking patterns in two synthetic drugs, methamphetamine and fentanyl. After that, it will explain how Beijing’s incentives in the pharmaceutical and chemical sectors impact methamphetamine and fentanyl export volumes. This paper will conclude by comparing time series data on methamphetamine and fentanyl seizures at the U.S.-Mexico border with the progression of China’s enforcement efforts.  

Washington, DC: William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, 2020. 28p.

By Vanda Felbab-Brown

Synthetic opioids remain the source of the deadliest U.S. drug epidemic ever. Since 1999, drug overdoses have killed approximately 1 million Americans,[1] an overdose lethality that has increased significantly since 2012 when synthetic opioids from China began supplying the U.S. demand for illicit opioids. Even though China placed the entire class of fentanyl-type drugs and two key fentanyl precursors under a controlled regulatory regime in May 2019, it remains the principal (if indirect) source of U.S. fentanyl. Fentanyl scheduling and China’s adoption of stricter mail monitoring has created some deterrence effects. Instead of finished fentanyl being shipped directly to the United States, most smuggling now takes place via Mexico. Mexican criminal groups source fentanyl precursors — and increasingly pre-precursors — from China, and then traffic finished fentanyl from Mexico to the United States. Scheduling of fentanyl and its precursors in China is not sufficient to stem flows to the United States.

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  There is little visibility into China’s enforcement of its fentanyl regulations, but it clearly remains limited. U.S.-China counternarcotics cooperation remains fraught, and from the U.S. perspective inadequate. Rejecting U.S. blame of China for the opioid epidemic and emphasizing U.S. responsibilities for that calamity, Beijing points to its benevolence in anti-drug cooperation. But China’s cooperation with the U.S. in the global counternarcotics campaign has been subordinated to the overall deteriorated geostrategic relationship between the two superpowers. There is little prospect that in the absence of significant warming of the overall U.S.-China bilateral relationship, China would significantly intensify its anti-drug cooperation with the United States. U.S. punitive measures, such as sanctions and drug indictments, are unlikely to change that. Structural characteristics of synthetic drugs, including the ease of developing similar, but not scheduled synthetic drugs and their new precursors — increasingly a wide array of dual-use chemicals — pose immense structural obstacles to controlling supply, irrespective of political will to prohibit and regulate their use and enforce the regulations.

New York: Brennan Center for Justice, 2022. 84p.